Their Right
I remember feeling really lucky when I went to boot camp in the late eighties down at Parris Island. My uncle had served in the Army in Vietnam and I come from a long line of Naval Officers so it was a big surprise when I joined The Corps, only the second in my family to ever do so. I felt lucky because the Sgts., Staff Sgts. and Gunnies that trained me were Privates and PFCs and Lance Corporals in Vietnam, had heard shots fired in anger, knew what good training meant to our survival. The heavy of our platoon was a tall, distinguished Dark Green Marine Gunny who'd served two tours in Vietnam, talked like Edward G. Robinson and was hard as nails. Gunny Knox, thank you wherever you are (I know from Leatherneck magazine that it is now Sgt. Major Knox!)
Near the end of boot, back then, you did a short week 'in the field' for Basic Warrior Training (BWT) which we later dubbed Big Waste of Time since further training showed it was a scant introduction to warfare. One night, maybe the last night, Gunny Knox was talking to us about what it was like to come home from Vietnam proud of his service, thankful to be alive, grieving inside for his dead buddies. He saw hippies in the airport and on the streets, calling him a baby killer and more. I'll never forget the gist of the words he spoke then, something to the effect of:
"You'll maybe get the same treatment sometime, back from some God-forsaken s***hole, a Hell on Earth. Your home now; momma, comfort, no half mad sons of b****es trying to kill you, there's hot chow and warm water and real racks, beer!, ice cream!....then some snug, safe, judgmental lowlife calls you a baby killer. Here's the thing: we have to protect these ignorant bast***s even when we maybe would like to gut them! That's our job. Catching bullets for the ungrateful, the unknowing, the disinterested. Get used to it, it's the job."
Jack Nicholson did a pretty good job of explaining it in the trial scenes of "A Few Good Men" but Gunny Knox made it way more real for us. They get to act like they do in Berkeley because I did what I did, because all the vets here and everywhere did and do. It's the job.